R. Salvatore - The Bear

Was that weakling Yeslnik really capable of this?

The answer lay starkly before him.

Anxious thoughts crept around him like the black wings of the many cawing crows. He had to get to Cadayle and, with her and Callen, flee to Vanguard. They needed to be as far from this wretched and despoiled land as possible.

Bransen started to leave the ruined keep when he heard the distinctive whistling of an arrow cutting the air. Crouching low in the shadows, he scanned the area, using his skill and his magic, his inner ki-chi-kree, to propel himself up the rubble of the keep's southwestern corner. The roof in this section was fully gone, allowing Bransen to peer over the wall top. Spying three archers down a hill and across a field, he realized that the arrow had not been aimed his way. The men had a woman in tow, and one was pulling her along by the hair while the others took turns kicking at and spitting on her.

Bransen felt the blood running thick in his veins, felt his heart pumping strongly. His fingers tingled with anticipation.

"It's not my fight," he told himself determinedly, conjuring images of Cadayle, reminding himself that she was pregnant with his child. He had gone to Pryd Town to deliver his message and to Ethelbert dos Entel in search of a greater truth.

And he had failed. He had lost everything-everything except for Cadayle and their child and her mother. They were his responsibility now. That alone, and not some unknown woman being dragged away by ruffians in a land he did not know.

The stench of death continued to waft up about him, a pungent reminder of the awfulness of this place, a reminder that he could not stay here. Instinctively he looked west where the sun was low in the sky. He went back down the wall, exited the keep, and moved swiftly away to the north. He had almost made the road again, stubbornly telling himself with every step that this was not his fight and not his business.

But Bransen could not bring himself to cross that road. He turned about, to the south, in pursuit of the men and the captured woman. He turned his back to the north and to the responsibility he had proclaimed as his lone care and to the lie of dispassion.

As the miles rolled out beneath his feet he was surprised to find that those he pursued had not stopped with the setting sun but had continued on long into the night. Finally he spotted their campfire on a distant hill to the south. The ground was more broken now, for he had entered the foothills of the Belt-and-Buckle. Exhausted and hungry, Bransen still did not stop until he had drawn very near, almost to the base of the rounded hillock.

He heard the woman crying and screaming for someone to stop.

"Ye belong to me now, wench!" a man yelled back. "I'll take ye as I want ye!"

"Me husband," she pleaded.

"Dead and pecked by the crows!" the man shouted back. And she began screaming again.

Bransen crept up the side of the hill as fast as he dared, trying to remain silent and unnoticed. For there were others up there, he realized, and the top of the hill was bare of trees or any other cover he could discern.

Flat on his belly he crawled along, serenaded by the woman's soft cries and the grunts of her attacker. He peered over the hill and spotted them off to the side behind the two burning campfires where they lay behind a log, the man atop the woman, having finished his deed. But Bransen could hardly look that way, more surprised to see other women and children all about the place, some curled on the ground and sleeping, others milling about, their eyes vacant, their faces and hair filthy with soot and mud.

A pair of young boys began to fight, one quickly gaining the advantage. He knocked his opponent down and dropped atop him, straddling him and pummeling him mercilessly.

Those nearest adults seemed not to notice, and several other children just giggled as the beating continued.

The boy continued to rain blows on his victim, then, to Bransen's horror, reached out and picked up a small stone and smashed it down hard on his opponent's face again and again.

"Don't ye kill him," a man instructed. "Just hurt him."

Bransen found it hard to breathe. Across the way, the rapist stood and brushed himself off, then kicked the prone woman and spat upon her.

"Here now, don't ye do that," the man who had just spoken to the vicious lad called out. "My turn with her."

He headed over toward the log, opening his belt as he went, and no one seemed to pay him any heed at all.

"And if ye try to run again we'll do worse, don't ye doubt," said the man who had already had his way with the woman. He kicked her again for good measure and moved back to the main camp. One younger girl watched him with wide eyes, and he shouted at her, "Get me some food!" How she scrambled to obey!

Bransen couldn't comprehend the scene before him. He tried hard to keep his wits about him, to take a measure of the opposing force. He noted only three men-the ones he had seen from the keep wall-then he spotted a fourth coming up over the back crest of the hillock with an armload of wood.

This is not your fight, Bransen stubbornly reminded himself. You can't save the world, fool. It's all beyond you. There is no point!

He almost convinced himself to walk away. So despondent was Bransen that he nearly surrendered, there and then, to the darkness. Before he had even finished that internal battle, fate mercifully intervened, for a girl spotted him and let out a shriek, pointing and hopping.

Bransen probably could have melted into the forest at the base of the hill before any of them got a weapon drawn, but the sudden tumult shattered Bransen's pathetic justifications for leaving. He stood up and took a few steps toward the encampment, in full view then of more than twenty sets of eyes.

He noted the man behind the log scramble up from the beaten woman, hiking his pants as he went. He noted the previous attacker reaching down to grab a short bronze sword as the man with the armload of wood dropped it all except for two sturdy little clubs, one of which he tossed to the fourth man.

Bransen walked in. They obviously didn't recognize him as the Highwayman; he wasn't wearing his distinctive, one-sleeved shirt or telltale mask. Had he thought about it, he would have donned those clothes, using his reputation to his advantage. Too late now.

"Leave her alone," he said to the man still behind the log.

"What clan are ye?" the man with the sword demanded. "And what foolishness is in ye to think ye can walk into Clan Huwaerd? Get ye gone!"

"Clan?" Bransen replied skeptically. "I see four ruffians and a score of helpless prisoners."

Some of his bluster was lost as he spoke the words, though, as the young girl who had spotted him ran over to the man with the sword and hid behind him, calling him "father" as she went.

"What is this?" Bransen asked. He pointed back to the north, toward the distant, burned-out town and keep. "Was that your village?"

"He telled ye to leave," said one of the men with the clubs, who, along with his partner, advanced menacingly.

"No, but he ain't going nowhere," said the other man, slapping his club into his open palm repeatedly. "He'll just come back for us with his friends."

The man with the sword moved toward Bransen's left flank. Of more concern, though, was the man who had just started with the woman reached down and produced a bow and arrow.

"Look to the trees for others!" the man with the sword ordered. All the women, save the one on the ground, and all the children rushed to different points along the hilltop and peered down into the darkness.

"Now ye tell us who ye are," the swordsman demanded of Bransen.

"And if I do tell you, will it matter?"

The man looked at him curiously.

"I am Bransen Garibond of Pryd Town, son of Bran Dynard of the Order of Abelle and of Sen Wi, who was Jhesta Tu. None of that means anything to you, I am sure, except that you know of Pryd Town-"